Slow Cooker Bread Butter Pudding with Gula Melaka

Bread butter pudding is a popular dessert in many Malaysian homes, and for very good reason – it’s easy to make, appeals to the young and old, and makes use of that pesky slices of stale bread no one wants to eat anymore. All you need is some bread, raisins, and some freshly made custard. Then just sit back while the oven takes care of the rest. Oven-baked bread butter pudding is pretty good, what with the crust and all. But have you ever tried making slow cooker bread butter pudding? Our minds were blown when we made some in the Kitchen Lab. Crispy edges, deliciously moist everything else? We don’t know if we can have bread butter pudding made any other way now!

Slow cookers work by retaining moisture – making them excellent for dishes like soups, porridge, curries and anything else that doesn’t require liquid to evaporate. And they’re pretty good for making moist cakes too, like our Slow Cooker Gula Melaka Chocolate Cake recipe that’s so good we kind of wouldn’t mind a slice of some right now. Recipes that call for moisture like bread butter pudding is perfect for making in the slow cooker as well. Commonly served with cream or extra custard on the side to make up for the pudding drying in the oven, slow cooker bread butter pudding is so incredibly moist there’s no need to serve it with extra cream on the side at all. It was mouthful after mouthful of pure comfort, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

But first, a history lesson

Despite being a popular dessert in Malaysia, bread butter pudding is not a local invention. It’s actually considered a British cuisine, which makes sense what with colonialism introducing British food to Malaysian shores. The earliest recorded published recipe for bread butter pudding is in 1728 by Eliza Smith…. Just ten years shy of 300 years! That is an impressive number of years for this humble and unassuming pudding.

The basic recipe hasn’t changed all that much since then, although modern varieties may also include an assortment of nuts and other raisin-type dried fruits. We’ve kept our recipe classic, but it wouldn’t be the Butterkicap way of doing things if we didn’t localize it a little bit. And so we took out white sugar and replaced it with the much more flavourful, wholesome and local gula Melaka. The result was delicious – moist slow cooker bread butter pudding with a hint of sweet caramel that complements but doesn’t overwhelm the entire dessert. We’re pretty sure you’re going to like the local twist we introduced to this recipe.

Let’s bring out the slow cooker and get cracking.

Ingredients

250g (8 slices) white bread

75g (2/3 cup) raisins

For the batter

42g (1/4 cup + 2 tbsp) packed grated coconut sugar (gula Melaka)

4g (1 tsp) vanilla essence

¼ tsp nutmeg powder

¼ tsp cinnamon powder

55g (1/4 cup) butter, melted

180ml (3/4 cup) cream

360ml (1 ½ cup) milk

1/2 tsp salt

4 eggs

Making slow cooker bread butter pudding

Layer bread and raisins inside your slow cooker pot, tearing the bread in half if necessary to fill in any gaps. It doesn’t have to look perfect.

Layer bread and raisins inside slow cooker pot

Add all batter ingredients to separate bowl.

Combine all batter ingredients together in a whisking bowl

Whisk the batter ingredients until smooth, making sure there are no remaining lumps.

Whisk until smooth

Pour batter into the slow cooker pot, making sure to pour it over as much of the bread surface as possible.

Pour batter all over the bread

Using a long spoon, gently push the bread into the batter to make sure all the bread slices have soaked up the batter liquid and is not floating. Do not press down too hard as you do not want to flatten the bread.

Make sure the bread is all soaked through

Select the ‘bake’ setting on your slow cooker with the timer set for 50 minutes. Now go watch that Netflix episode, have a shower, pick up your kid from school, etc, while the slow cooker takes care of your slow cooker bread butter pudding.

Your slow cooker bread butter pudding is ready when there is no liquid pooling on the top. You can also test to check it by sliding a knife into the middle of the pudding. It shouldn’t come out clean, and not wet and sticky.

The slow cooker bread butter pudding is looking good!

The inversion

The trickiest part of making slow cooker bread butter pudding is taking it out of the pot. While you could scoop it out straight from the pot, especially if you’re not fussy with how it looks on the plate, you’re going to want to make it quite presentable if serving to guests. Getting your pudding out of the pot is not difficult, but it does need to be done with some care.

First, remove your pot from the slow cooker contraption.

Take a large flat surface, like a cutting or cake board, and place it over the mouth of the pot, making sure the board covers the entire opening.

Protect your hands with oven mitts. With both hands, grab the pot and the board together and gently, but swiftly turn it over to let the pudding drop onto the board.

Turn the pot and board over gently but swiftly

Carefully remove the pot, lifting it straight up so the bread butter pudding settles onto the board.

Grab your serving plate (checking to make sure it’s large enough to hold the entire pudding) and place it over the pudding. Try and avoid using very heavy plates or you might end up squishing your slow cooker bread butter pudding instead.

Place your serving plate over the pudding

Repeat step three by gently but swiftly turning over the pudding in one quick motion so it drops onto the plate.

Remove the board and your pudding will be the right (and more presentable) side up!

Voila!

Serve pudding while still warm.

Extra tips

Bread butter pudding is traditionally served with custard, but the slow cooker version is so moist because it doesn’t dry out so there’s no real need to. However, if you can’t eat your bread butter pudding without custard, go right ahead.

For extra decadence, serve your slow cooker bread butter pudding with a scoop vanilla ice cream. Just the thought of it has us shivering in delight!

We used the Philips all-in-one cooker which has a useful baking function. If your slow cooker only has the standard high or low temperature options, let your slow cooker bread butter pudding cook on low temperature for 3 hours. That’ll give you more than enough time to watch that movie you missed out on at the cinema!

Too much bread butter pudding? Store leftovers in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Slow cooker bread butter pudding can be served cold, or heat it up in the microwave for about 30-40 seconds, depending on the size of your slice.

Just pudding it out there…

Now wasn’t your slow cooker bread butter pudding crazy good? And that gula Melaka just adds a little something to it that makes this dessert even more extra without losing that whole comforting bread butter pudding vibe. With. A recipe so delicious you might be tempted to double (or triple) up on this slow cooker bread butter pudding recipe, but do so with caution. It may need a longer time to cook, and it’s going to be pretty heavy (and more fragile) when you try removing it from the pot! If you manage it successfully though, do share your tips and secret with us so we can pass it along.

But wait! Before you take one more bite of your slow cooker bread butter pudding, don’t forget to snap a picture and share it on Instagram or Facebook. Remember to use the #butterkicap hashtag so we can see how you’re enjoying our recipe. Done? Ok, you can go back to eating now.

We're just a small group of friends who love food, culture and Malaysia. We saw the rise of mediocre food, deteriorating relationships and missed the good old days of Malaysia where food was good, homes were warmer and full of friends and family. So we rolled up our sleeves, and made Butterkicap with the hope that it will bring people and flavors home.